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A desktop made for one

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Re: A desktop made for one

#121

Post by linsomniac »

geir_isene wrote: post #15
nine_k wrote: post #13

This is very cool. I wonder how much time did it actually take, and how much did it cost, because Clause Code is very much not free [1] [2]. It's more like hiring a robotic contractor, very fast, but with a serious hourly rate. [1]: https://fortune.com/2026/04/28/nvidia-executive-cost-of-ai-i... [2]: https://www.briefs.co/news/uber-torches-entire-2026-ai-budge...

I'm on Claude Max, so it didn't cost me anything more than the subscription I already have. Had to use it for Something. As for time - for the full CHasm and Fe2O3 suite of sw, I started the work 2026-03-29 and have probably spent 60h or so of my time. But then again I have a very tailored CC setup that I have fine-tuned since last summer with more than 70 CC projects helping me get it the way I need it to be since t…

@geir_isene: This is insanely cool, thanks for writing about it.

Re: A desktop made for one

#122

Post by dpark »

nz wrote: post #81
Agingcoder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed I’ve already started writing software for myself using Claude. I would never have done this if it weren’t for AI - I simply don’t have the time otherwise . I now have tailor made apps with all kinds of bells and whistles that commercial products can’t offer easily ( I fall under non commercial usage which opens a lot of doors ), and that free software might offer, but later. I have also learnt a lot technicall…

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

> I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price?

Yes, because the price is measured in time.

With LLM tooling I’ve churned out idiosyncratic tools that fit my use cases quickly. Takes maybe a day instead of a week. A week instead of months. The fast turnaround changes the economics of writing custom tools for myself.

Re: A desktop made for one

#124

Post by Agingcoder »

nz wrote: post #81
Agingcoder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed I’ve already started writing software for myself using Claude. I would never have done this if it weren’t for AI - I simply don’t have the time otherwise . I now have tailor made apps with all kinds of bells and whistles that commercial products can’t offer easily ( I fall under non commercial usage which opens a lot of doors ), and that free software might offer, but later. I have also learnt a lot technicall…

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

Well, I’ve been writing code for decades so I know because there was a time ( when I was younger ) where I did just this.

I also know that these days, for all kinds of reasons, I do not have the time to write the tools I’m writing now without AI. I don’t lack the ability, and I could - it will simply be multi months side projects that I can’t / won’t complete.

Re: A desktop made for one

#125

Post by skydhash »

vessenes wrote: post #109
blks wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're headed into a period where you can shape your tools exactly as you like the What period were we for the past 50 years?

Since roughly 1995 or so we've been in a world where quality tooling was provided by on the order of 1,000s of developers, mostly open source. GNU, Xorg, Apache, emacs, nginx, and so on. Or you could opt in to the Microsoft ecosystem. The ~20 years prior to that we were in a world where you chose to align with either Microsoft's tooling, IBM, or shops providing Unix tooling from proprietary vendors. I elide a nearly…

The reason I don’t bother writing code this days is because my use cases have been solved, and if they weren’t, I’d tweak the most suitable candidate. One of my principles is to keep my workload small. More often than not, things starts with a small script or plugin, and then grow according to my needs. Why replicate what others have already done?

Re: A desktop made for one

#126

Post by stateofinquiry »

redfloatplane wrote: post #22

I (and I'm sure many others) have been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of months. I called it "Extremely Personal Software" in a blog post a few months ago ( https://redfloatplane.lol/blog/14-releasing-software-now/ ) but there are lots of names and concepts floating about for the same basic idea. I think it's possible the amount of new software that will be written for an audience of 1-10 will be grea…

Interesting points. With the extreme cheapening of the cost (time/skill) for software production, we can have "Extremely Personal Software", as you mention and as demonstrated by the source. I wonder if we will reach a stage where "software" is written by a computer for an audience of 1 and for a single task, to be run once only- via an interface that works for all tasks. The very concept of software as something that users have to learn to use (memorizing keybindings, for example), might go the way of the punch card.

More like Star Trek, we would just ask "computer" to do things, and its machinations (and "software") will be invisible to us. We would just have output to deal with.

I think this would mean a lot of things. I'm sure I can't fathom all of the implications, but it sure makes me feel old! Interesting times ahead.

Re: A desktop made for one

#127

Post by cwnyth »

taude wrote: post #83
nz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

Not speaking for the OP. But my biggest constraint is time. Now with agentic coding, I can work in 5 to 15 minute bursts a few times/day, and make meaningful progress on projects, where as before I would have never been able to context shift from my day job long enough on a personal project.

Yep! Time was the biggest factor. I could have created that one tool I had for years been wanting to make, but tech moves fast, and I have a job and a family and a passion for music and yadda yadda yadda. AI has been a game changer for actually accomplishing big dreams I just didn't have the time to bring about to fruition.

Re: A desktop made for one

#129

Post by lloeki »

tonyarkles wrote: post #67
jpease wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be contrarian, perhaps some measure of risk is reduced by the scale of one. Identifying a vulnerability that can be exploited against many thousands or millions of targets is perhaps more attractive than a single one of individually low value. This of course would assume that vulnerabilities are in fact unique (which is admittedly questionable).

I had the exact same thought. Pretty low probability that there's going to be a script-kiddie exploit for your custom tools. Pretty decent probability that there will be vulnerabilities present if someone cares enough to target you.

There are entire vulnerability/fault/misdesign classes that are fairly general and appear to naturally emerge.

See e.g the lock screen gap that another commenter noted in a nearby thread.

Re: A desktop made for one

#130

Post by Karrot_Kream »

wyclif wrote: post #103
mrob wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still vaguely remember how difficult man pages were to understand when I first started reading them. I'm pretty sure the biggest obstacle is the fact that most documentation is written for people who already know the standard computer science terminology. I have a generally negative opinion of LLMs, but one thing they do very well is function as a "reverse dictionary". You can input a idiosyncratic description of s…

I've commented on this subject before, but the fact of the matter is that kids getting into high tech and programming mostly don't read books anymore. How do I know? Recently I was hanging out with a bunch of high school students who asked me how I learned. I said it was mostly via books and man pages. "Yeah, don't sleep on high quality written material. O'Reilly. Wiley. Addison-Wesley. Manning. MIT. No Starch Press.…

I learned programming from tutorials :) Only after I kept encountering terms in tutorials (long after I was building (badly organized) programs) that I didn't understand well did I decide to read my first book, K&R's C. This was when animated gifs were a novelty not worth the data transfer time.

I think every generation feels like their way of learning was the best, but we all make it work. There was a time when the architects of systems directly tutored programmers on how to write programs.

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